


Not Everything is Black and White

by Scale_Shark



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidents, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amputation, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, but there's never serum, death happens before fic, or meet their soulmate, that au where everyone sees in black and white until they fall in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-25 13:38:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scale_Shark/pseuds/Scale_Shark
Summary: Bucky's never really fallen in love, not with a soulmate. He's never seen a glimpse of the colors his friends have unsuccessfully tried to describe before they inevitably drift away from each other. Bucky has always seen the world in black and white and that's how it's always going to be. After a terrible accident, Bucky moves to a new town. With years, he builds a routine that keeps him from getting attached to anyone, but when he meets someone new to town, it all starts crumbling apart.After the death of his mother, Steve crosses states with hopes to take classes at a small local college where no one knows him. As he and Bucky become friends, Steve starts to process his grief with someone who understands loss and Bucky must deal with events he's buried for years.





	1. Chapter 1

Bucky knows some people see color the instant they meet, falling in love at first sight. You can see it in their eyes when strangers find excuses to talk to each other, a dazed, wondering look that swells up from inside them as if they're seeing the world for the first time. Bucky's grown used to losing friends over the years as one by one they fell in love or met their soulmate. Overnight they're living in separate worlds, indescribable to the other. Since his last move he’s been pretty good about not getting attached to anyone and it’s been a few years since he’s had to silently say goodbye to a friend who won’t admit they’re drifting apart.

Bucky’s never had a glimpse into that other world, nor is he ever really expecting it. It doesn’t bother him though; after all, he can’t miss what he’s never had. A world of gray isn’t so bad. Still, he keeps his eyes to the ground as he walks through town, avoiding dozens of eyes. He tells himself it’s because the sun is too bright to look up straight and besides, he doesn't need to look at directions to know where he's going. Today is Saturday and the sidewalks are full of people shopping and meeting for lunch. The chattering conversations press in on him like sides of a vice.

Bucky slips down a few of the less busy streets and enters the dollar theater which at this point should really be called the four dollar theater. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darker lobby, lit only by a few cheap fluorescents. The door bumps into its frame behind him and just like that the noise of outside activity is gone. Whatever oppressive force that’s been squeezing his lungs tight is gone and breathing comes easier. He pays $4 to see a movie that came out 3 months ago and steps into the concessions line. There’s only one person in front of him, but they keep changing their mind when the cashier tries to ring up their total. She becomes more flustered the longer it goes on as if she’s not sure whether to be angry with the customer or embarrassed about the situation. Bucky winks at her when she’s looking and she rolls her eyes in return, missing the latest order. She's been working here almost as long as Bucky's been coming and they have an amicable relationship. He knows where she works, she knows what movies he likes, and they've never much asked other questions.

“-help you?”

Bucky’s head snaps to the right and he sees an employee has opened another cash register. The young man standing behind the counter forces a half smile.

“Uh, yeah,” Bucky says walking up to the counter. Up close, the man doesn’t look as young as Bucky first thought. He’s definitely not in high school despite being almost a half a foot shorter than Bucky who’s a few inches short of 6’ himself. The shadows running through the cashier’s lean cheeks and the dip below his eyes make his exact age impossible to deduce.

He orders a medium popcorn not even bothering to look at the menu.

“Are you new here?” Bucky asks while the cashier flips open a bag and starts shoveling popcorn into it.

“Yeah, just started this week.”

Bucky can’t tell if the cashier is avoiding his eyes or is just intent on making sure the amount of popcorn in the bag is exact.

“Do you come here often?” the cashier asks, weighing the bag in his hand.

“Almost every week.”

“That’s a lot of movies. Do you ever have to see one twice?”

There’s a second of silence until the cashier looks up to see Bucky nod. More silence and Bucky hands over what he owes in cash. The cashier hands him the popcorn and looks up again as he shoves the drawer shut.

“Well, enjoy your movie uh…”

“Bucky.”

“Enjoy your movie Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t step away from the counter, squaring the man with a look like he’s trying to figure something out.

“What?”

“What’s your name?” Bucky asks.

The cashier squints at him, squeezing his lips in consideration.

“I’m Steve.”

Bucky feels like he’s just learned something important, but it’s like looking at a piece of a puzzle and trying to see the whole picture. The thought slips through his fingers before he can catch hold of it and then it’s gone. He realizes he’s been staring and shuffles around like his legs have turned to wood.

“See you later, Steve,” Bucky says and then wanders toward the hall of theaters.

...

Steve’s on break when Bucky’s movie lets out, not that he checked its runtime before he clocked out. He finishes his ham, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, crumples up the napkin it was wrapped in, and  lets it fall into the trash with a trickle of disappointment he can’t place. Stepping back into the lobby, Steve can tell there’s something different. Did someone change out a lightbulb or something while he was gone? The whole place just seems a little bit brighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty short first chapter, but it felt like a good place to stop. Generally, I would expect chapters to be longer than this. I'm hoping to include more characters later (I know that character list is so short it might as well not be there), but I'm not going to add them to the description until they're officially in the outline.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve’s driving down the street two days later when he sees someone familiar walking down the sidewalk. The man’s back is toward him, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his sport jacket. Steve slows the car and rolls the passenger window down.

“Bucky?”

Sure enough, the man turning toward him has the same broad shoulders and serious expression as the movie watcher. Bucky comes over and sticks his head in the window, brushing hair away from his face.

“Steve, hey.” Bucky’s face softens into a smile that makes Steve’s throat tighten. He has to swallow a lump before speaking.

“Do you need a ride?” he asks.

Bucky pops open the door and falls down into the passenger seat. “Thanks,” he says, clicking his seatbelt into the lock.

There’s a pause before Steve remembers he’s supposed to be driving and pulls back out into traffic.

“Where are you headed?” Steve asks as he works his way back up to the speed limit.

“The animal shelter. It’s monday afternoon,” Bucky states as if this is a routine thing that should be common knowledge.

“Do you work there?” Steve asks.

“Nah, I’m just a volunteer. I teach gym at the middle school back there,” he says, waving a hand.

Steve grimaces, but Bucky looks like he’s being serious.

“Do you like it?” Steve asks.

“I like it. I’ve been working there for almost three years. The kids are great.”

Steve glances over and sees Bucky at ease in the seat, looking off with a hint of a smile.

“No offense, but gym sucks.” Not that Steve was ever allowed to participate for very long.

This response is met by a huff of silent laughter and the rest of the tension on Steve’s face washes away.

“None taken,” Bucky says, “I try to make the games fun. There’s not really a set curriculum except for testing twice a year so I have a lot of freedom. Even then I’ll race them in the mile run and give out prizes for whoever can hold a pull-up the longest. They’re at that age where they're pretty eager to show off, you know.”

Steve didn’t know. He’d never felt the need to run a mile faster than anyone else, but that might be because he couldn’t. He pulls himself from memories of sideline benches back to the road.

“You can just drop me here,” Bucky says after another minute. Steve had almost forgotten there was an actual destination to this car trip. When the car stops Bucky gets out and leans back down into the open door.

“Where were you headed? I didn't make you miss it, did I?” Bucky asks.

Steve raises his eyebrows to let out a deep sigh. “I’ve got a while to go still,” he says, “I’m going to the college.”

“Taking classes?”

“Just looking right now.” Today he has meetings with a financial and an academic advisor.

“Good for you,” Bucky says. He nods a goodbye and shuts the car door, walking to the volunteer entrance. He looks back when he hears the engine rumble and pull away, but doesn’t see Steve looking back.

…..

Steve studies the map in front of him trying to discern how to get back to his car. After he’d applied for some scholarships through financial aid, his academic advisor had insisted on giving him a tour of the campus to ‘show him everything the school had to offer’. Then he’d been called off somewhere and left Steve on an end of campus not anywhere near the parking lot. He tucks the map away in his back pocket and heads off in what he hopes is the right direction.

His throat starts to itch anytime there’s even so much as a gentle spring breeze and it’s not long before he has to take shelter in the nearest building to use his inhaler. Great, he hopes all of his classes are in the same building.

Maybe it won’t be so bad in fall, he thinks, knowing full well the relief will be minimal to none. He’s standing in front of a bathroom mirror trying to clear his sinuses when another young man bumps the bathroom door open with his hip, ink pooling in the lines of his hands. Steve wads up his tissue and tries to slip into a stall before he’s noticed, but it’s too late.

“Hey man, would you mind turning the faucet on?” the stranger says.

Steve does as asked, using the opportunity to snatch a good look at the man. He’s tall and around Steve’s age, maybe a few years older.

“My favorite fountain pen broke under my hands,” the man explains, “and then I just stood there holding it like an idiot until I remembered trash cans exist.” He imitates a concerned, panicked face that makes Steve smile, erasing any remaining embarrassment about meeting someone in a bathroom at a school he doesn’t even attend. The smile Steve gets in return is appealing, a small gap between his front teeth.

“I’m Sam, by the way,” Sam says, drying his hands off.

Steve drops his tissues in the trash and sticks his hand out, before realizing he probably should have washed up first. Sam takes his hand in a firm handshake anyway. “I’m Steve,” he says.

“So Steve, what are you here for?” Sam asks.

Steve wonders if it’s a trick question and side eyes the bathroom to make sure they didn’t magically transport somewhere else.

“I mean, what’s your major?”

Oh duh. Uh oh.

“I’m not actually a student here, but I’m looking at starting in the fall,” he says in his most confident voice, “I don’t know what exactly I want to study yet. What do you study?”

“I’m finishing the first year of my masters for psychology and counseling,” Sam says.

About then another man enters the bathroom and gives them a glare so serious one would think it illegal to talk in the Sanctity of the bathroom. Sam gestures toward the door and they exit together.

“Let me be among the first to welcome you to campus, even if you’re not a student yet.”

“Thanks,” Steve says, “that sounds like an interesting field of study.”

“It has its challenges just like everything else. Where are you headed?”

“I was trying to make my way back to my car, but allergies got the better of me,” as usual he doesn’t say.

“I was going to take off for the day. I'm parked around back, d’you want a ride?” Sam says.

Steve’s already been in the car with a sort of stranger today so he decides to make it two.

On the way back to Steve’s car he learns that Sam did his undergrad in a different state on an urban campus and moved here a year and a half ago for a slightly smaller grad experience. Sam invites Steve to go running with him in the morning and Steve politely declines.

He waves goodbye to Sam when his engine picks up and watches the other car pull out of the lot. The clock says it's only been 3 hours, Bucky might still be at the animal shelter. He intends to pull over and find out, but when he passes it his hands won't turn the wheel.

_I'm sure I'll see him again_ , Steve thinks, hoping for sooner rather than later. That night he pulls out his sketchbook and does a profile of Bucky, mouth softened the way it was when they talked in the car.

…..

“Alright- alright, hold on,” Bucky mumbles as he gets the correct house key in lock. As usual Jupiter has his feet up on the other side of the door scratching the window glass. Achilles sits back from the door, but her butt keeps wiggling in anticipation of a mad dash. Bucky has to shove against the door to get it open past Jupiter’s giant mass and as soon as he does both dogs burst outside.

They chase each other in a lap around the field until they remember Bucky is home. Jupiter lands his front paws on Bucky’s chest to give him a good sniff.

_Where’s the other dogs I smell_ , he seems to ask.

Bucky gets a massive paw in each hand and pedals them up and down before releasing him.

“You saw me a few hours ago you know,” he says. But Jupiter’s already gone, following Achilles into the field to look for a bathroom.

Bucky leans against the porch until the dogs are ready to be herded back into the house. There’s something heavy about the way the lock clicks into place, as if it were tired and could barely keep the door together. Bucky sits down on the kitchen floor with his back against a cabinet, a weight moving down from his head to his shoulders and on through his toes. Achilles brings a ball over, but when Bucky doesn’t look up she drops it and licks his neck instead.

At some point she lies down with her chest on his lap which makes bucky’s eyes soften as they would in a smile. I know you think you’re a lapdog, but you’re not, he thinks, tongue too leaden to form words. Achilles rolls her big eyes up to look at him as if she knows what he was thinking.

Jupiter finishes inspecting the house for intruders that may have slipped in while he was outside and lays down on the floor next to the two of them, a paw on Bucky’s leg.

Bucky’s fingers pet their heads, falling still at irregular intervals as his thoughts carry him away.

He doesn't know why this tiredness has fallen over him with such totality that there's not even enough energy to focus his eyes.

He wonders what Steve’s doing. Bucky wants to meet him again, find out what he’s going to school for, but that might imply they’re becoming friends and Bucky’s not sure how to feel about it. He avoids the other teachers at the school and does his volunteer work in silence, he likes to go to the movies alone...then again it’s been so long he doesn’t know if the solitude is still voluntary or if it’s something else.

The debate turns in his head like a spinning coin until he shoves it away and it falls flat. Bucky makes kissing noises at Jupiter and Achilles, extracting himself from under their mass. He gives them fresh kibble and water before taking care of himself. It's early, but he's too tired to do anything else so he eats peanut butter toast, turns on the radio, and goes to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s not until the following Saturday that they see each other again. This week when Bucky makes his way to the theater he finds himself looking around and enjoying the brightness of the day. After a long sleep Monday night, Bucky woke up feeling like himself again. This morning he took Jupiter and Achilles on a run, going until his legs were shaking. It wasn’t until several hours later, after food, rest, and a shower, that Bucky decided it was time to go to the movies.

He thought maybe Steve would be working today since he was working last Saturday. Then again, maybe he was only scheduled every other weekend or he had gotten busy with classes. He did his best to quiet the speculation; there was no sense working himself up if Steve wasn’t there. And besides, it didn’t really make a difference, did it?

He feels a rush of disappointment when he enters the lobby and doesn’t see anyone, let alone Steve. He waits patiently at the counter, scanning the board proclaiming “what’s playing” even though he already decided before he came down here. There’s the sound of someone running into a door frame and Steve comes out of a back room carrying a rather large box. The door swings shut definitively behind him and Bucky’s heart skips a beat with the lock’s click. Steve sets the box down at the concessions counter and lets out a weighty sigh as he rubs the arm he must have jammed in the door.

“Do you need help carrying boxes?” Bucky asks.

“Bucky, hi,” Steve says, coming up to the ticket counter. “What are you seeing today?”

“Do you have more boxes to carry?” Bucky asks again.

Steve shrugs. “I mean there’s a few, but I can handle it, it’s my job.” Bucky can’t help noticing one of Steve’s elbows shaking.

“C’mon, it’ll be faster. I do side work for moving companies and I’ve learned it’s better to work as a team.” He’s already moving toward the back room, Steve trailing after him. Bucky stacks up a mound of boxes in his arms, leaving the last one for Steve.

“Thanks,” Steve says when they set the boxes down again. “It did save me a couple of trips.” He rubs that spot on his arm again; he must have hit it harder than Bucky thought.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks, gesturing.

“Yeah, it’s fine, nothing much.”

“You’re still holding it. Let me see, you might need ice,” Bucky insists.

Steve reluctantly removes his hand and pulls the sleeve up, revealing the beginnings of what he can already tell will be a bad bruise. He stares Bucky in the eyes and in his strong, steady voice says, “I’m anemic, I bruise easily. I can take care of it.” Bucky’s fingers ghost over the skin, curling back when Steve drops the sleeve.

“Ice,” Bucky says, “you know.”

Steve relaxes, tension leaving his eyes. “I know.”

Bucky stands there, still beside all those boxes and can’t shake the urge to sit Steve down and take care of him, even though he knows Steve can handle a bruise by himself. He tells himself it’s like when one of his students gets hurt and he feels responsible for getting them to the nurse’s office, but it’s...different.

“So...you’re here for a movie?” Steve asks. Bucky looks up and stands back, nodding. Steve tries to give him a ticket for helping out, but Bucky won’t have it. He pays his $4 and follows Steve on the other side of the counter down to the concessions.

He eyes the popcorn, tapping his fingers inside his pockets and when he looks up he finds Steve watching him, waiting. In a split second decision he asks, “when do you get off tonight?” Steve eyes narrow almost imperceptibly.

“Seven,” he says.

“Do you want to maybe grab dinner with me?” Bucky asks.

Steve pulls his hands back from the counter, mouth slightly agape. Bucky hunches his shoulders lets hair fall into his face. He’s just about to say forget the whole thing and leave when Steve pipes up.

“I’d like that,” he says, a soft smile growing bigger. Bucky’s fists unclench and some small piece inside him leaps and turns his chest warm.

“Great. Great, I’ll see you at seven then,” Bucky says. He turns on stiff legs but for a wobbly knee and turns the corner into the theaters, popcorn forgotten.

Bucky tries to keep the smile off his face, but there’s no one to see it in the dark theater. That little piece inside him keeps on fluttering despite his attempts to squash it down. He hasn’t felt so giddy with anticipation in years.

…

Steve’s starting to feel antsy, his hands shaking even stuffed in his pockets. After the movie Bucky left the theater, promising to be back in a few hours and now it’s almost seven without any sign of the cashier who’s supposed to take the next shift. His fingers hover over the keyboard of his phone, ready to text her when she walks in with Bucky, laughing at something he’s said. Steve’s chest tightens, but loosens again with a deep breath.

Bucky looks up from the floor to meet Steve’s eyes and gives him that easy smile from the car.

“Ready to go?” Bucky asks. Steve nods, removing the nametag from his mandatory polo shirt.

Steve gives his coworker a stern look when she winks behind Bucky’s back on their way out the door. They take Steve’s car with Bucky acting as navigator. He’s directed to a small parking lot outside an Italian restaurant shoved in a corner between a nail salon and a television store. The inside is warm, the lighting dim. There’s a group of high school students practicing for orchestra by the door in soft familiar tunes.

Bucky orders some bruschetta for the two of them to share and veal parmesan as an entree. Steve orders something called zughetti with chicken for himself. Their waiter lets them know the kitchen is backed up, which they both reassure him is fine and settle in for the wait.

“Thanks for agreeing to come with me,” Bucky says again, “I’ve been thinking about coming here for a while, but I’ve never actually made it.”

“Yeah, thanks for asking,” Steve says _again_.

The silence between them isn’t comfortable or uncomfortable though Steve notices Bucky fidgeting with his straw wrapper.

“So, is your family from here?” Steve asks after a beat.

“No, they’re from Indiana, still there today.” He won’t meet Steve’s eyes and Steve is starting to think he’s got the wrong idea about this dinner. He starts replaying their earlier conversation from the theater in his head to find what he missed.

“What about your family, where are you from?” Bucky blurts out.

“Brooklyn,” Steve says.

“I visited New York once, long time ago.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhmm.”

And silence.

“Why’d you decide to move here?” Bucky asks. “New York seems nice.” He drops his straw wrapper and reflexively cracks his knuckles under the table, the pop barely audible.

Steve hesitates. He hasn’t talked about it since moving and truth be told he’d hoped he could have avoided it for a while longer. Not that he was avoiding dealing with it he was just…crushing any thought that came up before it could sink in. Bucky gives him a soft smile and even though he has no way of knowing the debate going on in Steve’s head, he feels encouraged. He wants to trust Bucky.

“My mom passed away a few months ago,” Steve says. “Cancer. I took care of everything after she passed. There was,” he pauses to breathe, “so much of her still there it was hard. I thought, you know, if I moved, nothing of her to get stuck on in a place she never visited.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, a statement, not a plea. He puts his hand on top of Steve’s, brushing his thumb across the back of his skin. That hurt is still there, fresh like a bubbling spring breaking through earth, but it doesn’t threaten to overflow, and Bucky’s hand is so solid, so grounding.

“It’s,” _not okay, definitely not_ , “what it is,” Steve says.

There’s a pause and Bucky says, “My sister died when I was younger.” He spits that word, _died_ , sour as spoiled milk, and looks away. “Her name was Rebecca.”

 Steve sees the conflict contorting his profile; he wants to make it stop. He turns his hand under Bucky’s so their palms meet, giving what he hopes is a comforting squeeze.

“I didn’t know,” Steve says. Bucky’s hand tightens ever so slightly around Steve’s before pulling away. There’s something Steve’s still missing, but he doesn’t ask and watches Bucky’s shoulders slowly relax with the realization that he’s not going to.

For some reason Steve can’t isolate, the air between them is more comfortable than before. Conversation is easier, stories lead to cautious laughter and then more confident laughter, a new bond of trust pulling them together.

“What did you study in college?” Steve asks.

“I didn’t,” Bucky replies with a hitch of his eyebrows. “I got my GED a few years back, then a certificate to teach physical education. I couldn’t picture myself at college.”

“I’m having a hard time picturing it for myself.”

“Yeah, but you’re what, 19?”

“20,” Steve corrects.

“I think it’s hard to picture yourself anywhere at that age.”

“You can’t be that much older than me,” Steve retorts.

“I just turned 24. If I had gone to college right after I was supposed to finish high school I would have graduated two years ago.” Bucky’s eyes get a faraway look, the straw he was twirling momentarily forgotten. Their appetizer comes and Steve sees him come back from wherever he was. “Sorry,” he says, “ah, what do you want to study?”

Steve takes a bite from one of the crostini, savoring the taste of tomato, onion, and something sweet he can’t distinguish.

“My mother wanted me to go into business administration or maybe finance.” The thought of him in a suit talking business five days out of the week while standing in an impersonal office brings a wince to his face.

“What, you don’t like finance?” Bucky teases. It brings the smile back to Steve’s face.

“I just don’t think it’s for me. She made me promise to try it though, she wanted me to have more options than she did.”

Bucky wipes crumbs off his fingers.

“If you could do anything, what would you want to do? What makes you happy, Steve?”

Steve looks at him with hunched eyebrows as he truthfully says, “I don’t know.”

The look Bucky gives him in return is reassuring. Like maybe it’s not good, but maybe it is okay.

.

The rest of their meal was just as good if not better than their appetizer. Apparently zughetti is zucchini that’s been sliced to look like noodles and while the texture is different, Steve finds himself enjoying it more than he originally expected. They skip dessert and Bucky pays.

“Gotta save that popcorn money for school, right,” Bucky says with a wink.

He drives Bucky home under his directions. He’d pictured Bucky in the middle of the city, but it turns out he lives outside of the main part of town in a one-story farmhouse. There’s a car covered in tarp parked near the rear, an empty undeveloped plot behind it. _Does he walk everywhere?_

Bucky undoes the latch on his seatbelt, allowing it to roll back into the seat, but he doesn’t make a move to get out. Instead of grabbing the door handle, Bucky takes Steve’s hand and brushes his thumb along the back like he did at dinner. The murmur of the radio fills the air between them. His hand warms again under Bucky’s touch, something new boiling deep inside his core.

There’s a flash in the corner of his eye, something he hasn’t ever seen before. The meters of the instrument dash are lit up with something bright, happy, warm. When he looks at it directly it’s gone, but it’s there again in the corner of his eye and he knows it’s real. A smile spreads, overtaking his face.

Bucky’s eyes brighten a curious, “what?” tumbling from his lips.

“I had a good time,” Steve says, unable to diminish the strength of his smile. He thinks he should be scared, but somehow it feels right. “Can I see you again?”

Bucky’s mouth parts a sliver to speak and he leans closer. “Yes,” he whispers, and kisses Steve. The kiss is soft, yet needy and lingering, a magnetic pull holding them together. Steve’s been starving for this, this one touch from _this one person_ and wonders if Bucky has been starving too.

When they pull apart, Steve searches the other’s face for the answer. Bucky blinks twice in quick succession, mouth twisting into an expression of shock or pain.

“I gotta,” his voice slips and he gestures toward the house. Steve thinks he sees tears floating in Bucky’s eyes before he turns away. And by the time Steve can process this thought, the screen door is shutting behind Bucky.

He stands up confused, one foot still in the car. He hears barking dogs and trees ruffling their leaves in the wind, but nothing more from Bucky, not even a light from the house.

…

Bucky shuts the door behind him, moving out of the window in the door. He’s certain he’s not breathing unless the rhythm has been drowned by the pounding of his heart. It beats and beats, slamming against his ribs until he’s sure it’s going to burst out of his chest.

He could have agreed to another date without kissing Steve, but the truth is he’d been thinking about it all evening and he just really wanted to. Had he known it would be so enticing- he hadn’t known he was hungry until he’d had a taste. That kiss, he reasoned, was his downfall, for when he pulled away and looked back into Steve’s eyes, he saw something new. Something cool and calming, different from the affection deliberately held there. A color.

His fingers tear through his hair, yanking it from the elastic he’d used to put it up for dinner. It snaps in his fingers and flies across the room, lost in the darkness. The dogs whine at his legs, butting their heads against his thighs, but he pushes past them to a bathroom and shuts the door behind him.

At the sink, he splashes water on his face until he can think again, until his heart rate slows and his breathing evens out. The dogs perk up when he opens the bathroom door, and lay their heads back down when they realize Bucky isn’t headed toward the kitchen. But when he opens up the front door and its screen they leap up again and bound past him into the yard.

He’s come back too late. Steve is gone, only tire tracks in the wet gravel remaining. The guilt of running off without an explanation sits like a rock in his stomach. _Not that he has a particularly good reason in the first place._ He calls Jupiter and Achilles to him and shuts the door once more.

Inside, he shoves hair out of his face, wondering what happened to his elastic. Jupiter and Achilles let him pet their backs while they eat, the familiar feeling steading him more.

“I saw a color today,” he whispers to them, forcing the word out. “Or at least, I thought I did.” The longer he thinks about it, the more he thinks it might have been his imagination or a trick of the light; it was awfully dark after all. The thought does nothing but add weight to his guilt.

Bucky doesn’t have a soulmate, he’s known that for a long time now. At some point his _non-existent_ soulmate would end up hurt and he knows it will be all his fault, so the universe simply didn’t give him one. It’s just logic.

 His thoughts trail back to dinner, to the pressure of Steve’s hand in his own and the sensation that they held something precious between their palms. He hadn’t meant to talk about his sister, but that raw, controlled sadness he saw in Steve felt so familiar. Instinctively he’d thought ‘he understands’ and ‘I’m understood’, and for the first time in years he gave someone the smallest piece of Becca, just before running away again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why this chapter was so difficult to write, but I agonized over it all of break. I'm pretty happy with the end result and I hope it's enjoyable for everyone else. Happy (late) New Year!


	4. Chapter 4

My brother, Jupiter, and I wake up and go to the door like always, but it doesn’t open. The light through the windows gets brighter, leaving warm sun patches for us to wait in, but still no one comes to open the door. My brother whines, picking each foot up one after the other. I’m antsy too. I nudge the door open to the room where our owner sleeps and it’s still dark inside except for the windows. One of his hands curls around the edge of the mattress, and I lick it, but he doesn’t reach out to scratch my ears. The bed is tall and it takes me two tries to jump up on it. I lick his face, shaking his long fur out of my mouth, but _still_ he doesn’t move. I scratch at his arm, then his chest, and then I give up the patting entirely and stand on him to get closer to his face. _Finally_ , he lets out a low, guttural groan, eyelids flickering. He gently moves me out of the way and sits up in the bed to look at the numbers on his phone.

“I’m so sorry, girl,” he mumbles at me. I nudge him as if to say, _it’s okay, but if you don’t hurry up and take care of us it might not be._ He shuffles to the front door where Jupiter bounces anxiously. As soon as there’s a crack big enough to get a nose through, we take off, ripping the door out of his hands. After relieving myself, I come back to check on our owner. I snuffle his bare toes and furry legs. His fingers are twitching like they used to when he would make my brother and I stay inside while he went onto the porch and breathed smoke. He doesn’t tell us to go back inside though, and I don’t see his little fire in either hand, so I turn back around to look for intruding squirrels.

Jupiter takes him a bright sunshine ball, the fuzzy kind that scratches my tongue, and he throws it back out for us. I chase him, trying to get to it first so I can be the one to take it back. We grapple, and Jupiter gets it this time. But now I’ll be closer when it’s thrown back. When we get tired, our owner follows us back inside, giving us each a biscuit treat, and apologizing again. He checks our water and gives us food.

When I’m done, my brother still wants to play so I wrestle with him, but then I wonder why our owner isn’t breaking us up like usual, even though we never hurt each other. I stop, and Jupiter tries to push me over, but with an agitated huff he lets me go in search. Usually he would eat with us, but he’s not in the kitchen, or the toilet room. Finally, I find him again in his sleeping room. There’s no light from the windows anymore, he’s blocked it out, and again he’s on the bed. I jump up on the first try this time and I turn toward him for praise. He’s already asleep though and doesn’t pay any attention to me.

He gets up once in the evening and lets us out, feeds us again, but when I finish eating he’s gone to sleep again. My brother and I curl up on the other side of the bed, even though there isn’t really space for both of us and wait for him to wake up.

.

Monday morning Bucky wakes up shivering, soaked in cold sweat and left gasping. The feeling of falling from a great height lingers,even now when he can feel the bed beneath him. Nausea hits like a crashing wave, accompanied by a cramping in his stomach strong enough to make him call in sick from work. Achilles and Jupiter are awake in an instant, crowding over him in the bed. As yesterday, he joins them outside, nibbling on crackers from a sleeve of saltines until his dogs are ready to go back in. With a glance at the once more grey sky, Bucky reaffirms the Universe’s mistake. He’s made enough mistakes of his own to accept that even the Universe can make a big one now and then.

He remembers again how warm Steve’s hand was and how it fit so nicely with his own. He recalls how smooth Steve’s lips were, and the eagerness with which he was met halfway between the passenger and driver seats. The feeling is ruined by the concerned and hurt expression worn as he left Steve sitting in the dusty, unpaved driveway.

The crackers do their job in quelling the rolling of his stomach, enough for him to risk some peanut butter and water.

It’s not until later, sitting on the couch with the t.v. flipped to the news and both hands scratching a dog that he realizes he doesn’t even have Steve’s phone number. He deserves some sort of explanation or at least an acknowledgement. An online search only serves to tell him there’s a whole lot of Steve Rogers and not one of them with the right picture. The only way Bucky knows how to get in touch with him is by going to his workplace and the possibility of a public confrontation makes him want to run far away.

Maybe, he thinks, it would really be better if they don’t talk. That way, no one gets hurt any more and everything can just slip back into normalcy. He hopes Steve’s not too mad at him, but if he is, time will lessen it. Or it won’t. It shouldn’t matter, right? If they never see each other again.

Really, Bucky’s good right here, in his farmhouse with his two dogs. It’s nice living alone, much calmer than the craziness of his full childhood home. He has to blink until his eyes stop stinging. But yeah, living alone is pretty nice; there’s never any surprises and if he doesn’t do the dishes but once a week there’s no one to see it or if he occasionally forgets to do the laundry, no one will see him picking through shirts until he finds the one with the least amount of b.o.

Then there’s dating, which he’s left to others for so many years now. Dating Steve, that was never even a dream, Steve deserves someone much better than him. He makes a list in his head.

Bucky’s reasons not to date:

  1. As aforementioned, he doesn’t have to dress nice. It’s true he always feels better when he dresses up, but it’s not like it’s life changing.
  2. It’s more expensive to date someone, not that Bucky is crazy tight on money. And granted it was nice to spend some money on a good dinner to share with someone else.
  3. He can always do whatever he wants: like going to the shelter on Monday and getting groceries on Wednesday, playing with his dogs, taking them out, because- well obviously that’s not something he can do with other people just at random.
  4. He isn’t responsible for someone else’s happiness. Nobody has to rely on him to keep them safe, to not disappoint them-



Yeah…everything’s fine the way it is.

He goes back to work the next day.

.

Steve meets Sam for breakfast early in the week after one of Sam’s runs. He’s pulled a jacket over his sweat stained shirt and is watching Steve pick over his eggs.

“Do I smell so bad you lost your appetite?” Sam teases.

“Sorry,” Steve mutters and drops his fork.

Sam opens his mouth to say something, but snaps it shut. At last he says, “What’s the matter with you?” tone more concerned than accusing.

Steve scalds the tip of his tongue in his coffee.

“Nothing,” he says, unsure about sharing personal matters with such a new friend.

Sam gives him an encouraging smile, cheeks dimpling.

“Is it about school?” he asks.

Steve shakes his head no, but now that he’s thinking about it he remembers he’s supposed to sit in on some finance and business classes later this week, and it’s definitely very low on the list of things he wants to do.

“I get it if you don’t want to tell me. I won’t pressure you,” Sam promises. As if to show he’s willing to back off, he leans back in the booth and downs some orange juice. Steve’s grateful, but also he hasn’t had anyone to talk to about what happened except his coworkers and it feels even more inappropriate to discuss it with them.

“I had a date,” Steve says hesitantly, “last Saturday. It seemed like it was going really well, he even kissed me.” His eyes flicker up to see Sam’s reaction and finds him listening attentively. “But then, he kind of ran away, literally, into his house.”

Sam considers this and says, “Maybe he remembered he left the oven on.” It’s an innocent suggestion, but a weak one.

“I highly doubt that,” Steve says. Again, he finds himself hesitating. “That’s not all,” he confesses, “right before we kissed I saw something.”

“Something like Mothman or something like-“ Sam widens his hands in front of his eyes like something exploding.

“That one.”

“Woah,” Sam says, truly in awe. “Was it like all of them or just one? Which one?”

“I don’t know what it’s called yet. It comes and goes, mostly goes, I can’t really pinpoint it.”

“And he got cold feet right after your kissed?”

Steve nods.

“That’s gotta be it then. I bet he saw something in color too and freaked out.”

“Good to know I’m such an unappealing prospect for a soulmate,” Steve grumbles.

“Maybe he didn’t realize he was into men,” Sam suggests.

“Then why would he ask me out?”

Sam shrugs. “I’m sure he’ll come around and call you.”

Steve stays quiet, twisting his coffee cup around and around in his hands until Sam changes the subject to New York, asking what he should plan to see when he visits a friend at the start of the summer.

.

The problem is, Bucky doesn’t call, and he doesn’t come to the theater.

Steve was right about school though, he does hate finance. He told his advisor he needed time to consider the classes he attended and avoids the campus for the rest of the week.

The pages in his sketchbook fill with wavering stalactites, rings piled on top of each other until they run off the paper, and plain geometric shapes done in saturated watercolor. At one point he starts to draw a pair of eyes, but they start to look too familiar and he throws the book across the room, leaving it face down on the rug.

Right now, what he most wants is a fire escape, but they’re not popular here. So instead of sitting in the cool night air, remembering the ghost stories his mom told him when they pretended they were camping in the countryside, and letting his worries drift off into the dark, he must settle for a window. The air is humid with new rain, hot with the approach of Summer, and the wood frame sticks halfway open, preventing him from sticking his head out.

He imagines what his ma would say. She’d tell him to let go of her and to go live his life. Yet it doesn’t seem fair. Steve was always the one who was sick and despite being a single mother and working more hours than she should have to, she always had time to nurse him back to health. No matter how bad it looked, she always succeeded in fixing him, even as he continued failing to heal her.

Her image deteriorates, leaving behind only her pain that last day in the hospital, and the unnatural absence of it at her wake. That bubbling spring deep inside of him cracks and becomes an outpouring.

.

Steve is on his way to meet his academic advisor to tell him that ‘no, finance isn’t going to work out. No, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do except shovel popcorn for the rest of his life, and no, he is not particularly okay so maybe just back off about it,’ when he realizes he’s passing the animal shelter on a Monday. Checking the time, he steps on the brakes and parks on the side of the road.

He finds Bucky standing in a concrete pen in a room filled with concrete pens. His hair is pulled back in a bun again and an apron covers the front of his clothes down to his knees. He’s bent over, with the appearance of struggling against something. A second later, he pulls an empty bowl and a chew toy out of the concrete depths. The face of a small, scruffy dog follows him, very interested to know where Bucky is taking his things. Spotting a second person now in the room, the dog barks, facing him.

Steve’s fingers check the part of his hair. He’s less sure about this than when he parked the car, but it’s too late for him to back out now.

“Steve,” Bucky says, dropping his eyes under the pretense of balling up soiled newspaper.

“I thought you’d call,” Steve says, proud of his steady voice and straight to the point approach.

“I don’t have your number,” Bucky replies. It is a lame excuse and they both know it.

“You know where I work,” Steve counters.

Bucky nods, still pretending to be occupied by the newspaper he’s already crushed as much as possible.

“Please, look at me,” Steve says, failing, this time, to completely mask the hurt that’s been eating up his insides.

Bucky stops with the newspaper, hesitating, but finally looks up to meet Steve’s eyes.

Steve is surprised to see a similar pain reflecting from Bucky’s eyes, but it’s not like Steve is the one who left.

There’s an ache deep in Steve’s chest and, with a pulsing that matches the beat of his heart, color floods into the scruffy dog, a softer hue of the original one he saw. It’s followed by a new color, brought by the flick of the dog’s tongue, so different from the rest of his body. He feels his composure slipping the longer he watches the little beast, happy and bouncing despite the tension in the room. Looking up, Bucky’s cheeks and neck flush with this new color, lips full of it. Steve thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever seen, and he can’t even enjoy it. At least he knows it was _not_ a fluke.

“I know we’ve only been on one date,” Steve says, “but I like you, and I thought you liked me. I felt so connected with you that night and I know you felt it too or-” or saw it, he doesn’t say. “If you don’t want me, fine, but the least you could do is tell me.”

Bucky opens his mouth, tongue darting out to wet his lips, but nothing comes out, not an apology or an explanation, not even a noncommittal hum. Steve shakes his head, raking his fingers through his hair as he turns to go.

“I have other things to deal with,” he mutters.

Outside he clears his eyes and wipes his runny nose on his jacket sleeve before going on to the college.

.

Hands shaking, Bucky finishes cleaning the pen, then clocks out early and crumbles in a bathroom stall. There’s naught been a day when he hasn’t thought of Steve. He’s thought about Steve saying he didn’t know what made him happy and how much Bucky wanted to be part of what made him happy. How he really thought it was possible during those few precious hours before he yanked himself back to reality. Yes, he’d thought of making Steve happy, and then he’d pictured Steve in the back of an ambulance, unresponsive despite the sirens wailing overhead.

Neither of these images are what comes to him now. Now, all he can see is Steve’s beautiful, clear eyes, looking at him, into him, framed by a window, and the sky behind him exploding into color.

Bucky has spent so much of the last week and a half, convincing himself that his current life without Steve, without anyone, is better. But the moment he looked up and met Steve’s eyes, he knew he’d been playing himself a fool.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be followed with some confessions and explanations next chapter. Happy late Easter and Spring!


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